Pre-revolutionary thought in Russian society.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

In the title I put Russian society, but I guess this question could be applied to any socialist revolution.

In England today, there are a large number of workers with backward thinking when it comes to issues such as immigration. A lot of the arguments are xenophobic and racist, but obviously we understand these arguments to be naive and as a result of capitalism and the right-wing media's propaganda. I am wondering how backward the thinking of workers was in pre-revolutionary situations in countries like Russia, or China.

Were these concepts the same in Russia before the revolution? When you see the amount of workers in the EDL, who see Islam as a root to most of the problems they face in their lives, it can seem as if workers will never become conscious in an anti-capitalist sense. I'd guess that many workers would readily recognize immigration as a reason for their own poor conditions, and not capitalism, is this a new phenomena? Or has it been common in places where revolutions have taken place?

Hope this makes sense, it did sound better in my head!

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

In the title I put Russian society, but I guess this question could be applied to any socialist revolution.

In England today, there are a large number of workers with backward thinking when it comes to issues such as immigration. A lot of the arguments are xenophobic and racist, but obviously we understand these arguments to be naive and as a result of capitalism and the right-wing media's propaganda. I am wondering how backward the thinking of workers was in pre-revolutionary situations in countries like Russia, or China.

Were these concepts the same in Russia before the revolution? When you see the amount of workers in the EDL, who see Islam as a root to most of the problems they face in their lives, it can seem as if workers will never become conscious in an anti-capitalist sense. I'd guess that many workers would readily recognize immigration as a reason for their own poor conditions, and not capitalism, is this a new phenomena? Or has it been common in places where revolutions have taken place?

Hope this makes sense, it did sound better in my head!

The task of changing the people's beliefs in any entrenched system of ideas and values is always the question of the day and will never be easy to do -- Karl Marx himself famously is often quoted as having written that "the ruling ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class."

Anti-Muslim attitudes in the West go hand-in-hand with our pursuit of imperialism and policy of closely supporting Zionism and the Israeli state. While Muslim people and immigrants are the most frequent target today simply as the most convenient distraction for the dunderheads in our time, the whole notion of finding some kind of scapegoat has been around since time immemorial.

Imperial Russia's history is part of the same very long trend. Most of the workers and peasants were not only kept backward, illiterate, and politically repressed: the Romanovs and their monarchist supporters actively encouraged the worst of the reactionaries: the major monarchist organizations in the 1800s and 1900s were the Black Hundreds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds), who actively organized even among the workers and peasants with the agenda of suppressing any sort of revolutionary attitude. The Black Hundreds carried portraits of the Czar during their demonstrations and took part in 'Russifying' and attacking the minority non-Russian cultures (e.g. propagandizing against the Jews and Poles and making sure that the Ukrainians were not publishing or speaking in their language publicly).

The prinicpal scapegoat in the 1900s were the Jews, who were mostly outright forbidden to live in important cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were restricted to the Pale of Settlement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement) until 1917, and were periodically killed in mob attacks with the police turning a blind eye. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire)

Two years after 1917, with attacks on Jews still ongoing, Lenin still had to explain the phenomenon of anti-Jewish pogroms in popular Marxist terms:



"Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

"It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

"Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

"Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital."


(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x10.htm)

[AK]

I think the thread title should be re-named Working class attitudes pre-revolution.

[Adi Shankara]

Generally, Russians didn't think of such things as immigration and policy--they knew that, whatever they thought, didn't matter, as they held no way of changing such policies even if they wanted to, that, and they were much more concerned with feeding themselves than anything else.

the situation in pre-revolutionary society, I like to compare to the American South, in terms of slavery and helplessness; if you are descendant from a poor Russian family, more than likely you descend from a family of Russian "serfs" (effectively slaves; they couldn't even leave the land or marry without permission from their landlord)